Tyler sez, "A story about police in NYC citing non-existent rules to arrest subway photographers. Not only are they harassing innocent photographers, but they're costing taxpayers thousands from the inevitable lawsuit settlements that follow."

...People taking pictures in the subways are regularly stopped by the police and asked to let the officers see their images or to delete them.

"They don't have to do that, and it's completely unlawful to ask them to delete them," said Chris Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union. "But it comes with the explicit or implicit threat of arrest. It's a constant problem."

Mr. Taylor -- a college student and an employee of a transportation agency that he did not want to identify -- said he had been stopped before when taking pictures, but without problems.

Not this time.

"I said, 'According to the rules of conduct, we are allowed to take pictures,' " Mr. Taylor said. "I showed him the rules -- they're bookmarked on my BlackBerry..."

"He tells me that their rules and the transit rules are different," Mr. Taylor said. "I tell him, 'If you feel I'm wrong, give me a summons and I'll see everyone in court.' The sergeant told them to arrest me."

In handcuffs, Mr. Taylor was delivered to the Transit District 12 police station, and a warrant check was run. "They were citing 9/11," said Mr. Taylor, whose encounter was described on a blog by the photographer Carlos Miller. "Of course, 9/11 is serious. I said: 'Let's be real. We're in the Bronx on the 2 train. Let's be for real here. Come on.' "

@DBalling
You’re right, and you’re lucky. In the US this is an option, here in the UK, standing up against the police (not matter if you’re found innocent) will cost you a lifetime entry in the national DNA and fingerprint database.
It would be better in both countries though, if the police where educated enough about their limits, and the legal system had the balls to deal with misconduct in no uncertain terms.

One of the biggest things eroding our rights in the US is overlegislation.

Sure, you are protected from unwarranted searches and seizures. The police can’t do anything to you without probably cause.

All that doesn’t matter because there is always probable cause. There are so many laws on the books, that no matter what you do, you are doing something illegal.

Notice how the police in the article came up with the unreasonable noise and blocking traffic charges? The same thing happens in traffic stops. Got pulled over for speeding when you weren’t? That’s fine, they’ll find something wrong with your car. Worse yet, they might claim you were driving erratically, or come up with some other subjective accusation. Then when you go to court, it’s your word against the officer’s on whether or not you were speaking in a loud voice.

The only real solution to this problem is to throw out all the laws and start from scratch. Either that, or change the law to make room for common sense. In other words, it isn’t going to happen.

Wow. Glad I wasn’t arrested in September for taking pictures in the Subway. Clearly snapping a photo of my wife while we waited was a serious threat to national security.

Do the NY city police realize how bad of a reputation they have and how many people it may scare off from visiting an incredible city? (I should note that every officer we met was polite as was just about everbody we met in NYC)

Apreche – How is it that “real solutions” like this always seem to involve unrealistic things like convincing the population of the US to scrap the current legal code? Oh, and does your definition of “common sense” seem to be embedded in the other impossible solution?

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m going to have to shoot you in the face, you know, because of 9-11!”

“Oh, of course officer, I understand, fire away.”

The fact that they’re “citing 9-11″ and not an actual law of some kind is almost a joke. Almost. Of course cops can get away with it– it’s your word against a cop’s word in court, and they can make things up to suit their needs: “The second was for disorderly conduct, which consisted of addressing the officers in an â€œunreasonable voice.â€ (Unreasonable? By who’s standards? I guess it falls under section 7-f, “pointing out the ignorance of a police officer”).

Hopefully, now that less paranoid minds are running this country, more sensible ideas about how to deal with such situations will begin to be disseminated. We need statements and discussions coming from the top about what measures are actually effective in protecting our country while still ensuring our citizens’ constitutional rights.

Have their been any proven cases where photographs from easily accessed public venues have been a major factor in planning a terrorist act?

Is it a significant enough risk to consider taking away those rights?

We also need a re-affirmation from our leaders that this is a country run by the rule of law. That all people are required to follow those laws and you can’t just make up new laws out of thin air and apply them to certain people because you want to.

Police, security guards and others take their direction from what they see their leaders doing.

Yes it is great that individuals stand up for their rights when they are persecuted under non-existent laws but really they shouldn’t have to. The police should know very clearly what the laws are that they are supposed to enforce and that they are not allowed to enforce laws which don’t exist.

Hopefully, now that less paranoid minds are running this country, more sensible ideas about how to deal with such situations will begin to be disseminated. We need statements and discussions coming from the top about what measures are actually effective in protecting our country while still ensuring our citizens’ constitutional rights.

Have their been any proven cases where photographs from easily accessed public venues have been a major factor in planning a terrorist act?

Is it a significant enough risk to consider taking away those rights?

We also need a re-affirmation from our leaders that this is a country run by the rule of law. That all people are required to follow those laws and you can’t just make up new laws out of thin air and apply them to certain people because you want to.

Police, security guards and others take their direction from what they see their leaders doing.

Yes it is great that individuals stand up for their rights when they are persecuted under non-existent laws but really they shouldn’t have to. The police should know very clearly what the laws are that they are supposed to enforce and that they are not allowed to enforce laws which don’t exist.

November 28th, 1963, I was a middle school student with a penchant for photography, living in a small town in Michigan.

The week had already been a bit surreal, what with the events of the 22nd, we were all still reeling with the ramifications of that act.

I took the day to sort out my thoughts, and, with my camera in hand was wandering through our small town, taking pictures. I believe that, in the back of my mind, there was a thought that I would someday want to revisit the way the world looked, I knew it would never be the same.

I had burned through a couple of rolls of film on the old Argus brick that I had obtained a couple of years before, it still worked fine, it still works today, I get better pictures from that old 35mm than I do from a new Nikon digital slr, but that’s another story.

Our town had a city hall that dated back to the 1800’s, wonderful old stone building, two stories. I was spending a few minutes with the camera taking close-ups of corners and sills, carved and ornate.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to see one of the local police officers, one hand on his gun… (“damn” I thought, what is THIS about!)

“What are you up to son?”

Being well aware of the imbalance of power, I stood tall and said “Taking pictures, sir.”

“Pictures of what?”

“The building, sir.”

“Come with me,” he said, “and turned me around towards the entrance to the police station/jail.

I had no idea what the problem was, I had never been in any significant trouble.

The holding cell was 10×10, I was not the only resident, there was some drunk in the corner, dead to the world, smelling like last weeks garbage.

5 hours later the officer returned and dragged me in front of the magistrate.

“Espionage”, he said, “plain and simple. The world ain’t what it used to be, we’ve got to be careful!”

There was no acronym for “WTF” back then, so I just said the words.

“Shut up, kid”, the officer said.

“Espionage” the magistrate repeated, he liked the sound of those words.

“I’m 15 years old!” I said!

“Shut up, kid.”

This went on for about two hours, my parents were called, they called a lawyer, the lawyer showed up (his office was next door). Threats were exchanged, names were dropped..and, eventually I was sent out the front door….

It’s the old “You may beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.” If the threat of arrest doesn’t make you back down, they’ll arrest you and pile on as many charges as possible in the hope that something sticks. The psychology of (some) individual cops means that they’re unlikely to back down if someone tells them they’re wrong; the nature of the police force as an institution means that they will drag the matter out for as long as possible, until a lawyer tells them that they don’t have a case and that they have to settle up.

If you are sure of your rights and can stick it out, you may eventually collect, but they’ll go out of their way to make the whole thing as unpleasant as possible for you.

As it’s ultimately the taxpayer who has to foot the bill, there’s not a lot of incentive for them to fix the system.

Creating a new legal system isn’t a reasonable course of action. You might imagine it would be, but that is exactly what Napoleon attempted to do, and what has led to a terrible system that the French (via Jacques Chirac and now Sarkozy) are testing the waters about changing. The rules that are created are not rational in that you can’t think of every situation and write a perfect law, and similarly you can’t generate a set of perfect laws, or even get agreement about how many there should be, let alone the plain old content. The difference between civil law and common law (French and British traditions, resp.) have been blamed for lower growth rates in French colonies even. It just doesn’t work.

There is a demarcation between reasonable and unreasonable. That’s why we use those literal terms. The true answer in these cases lies in who is made answerable for abuses. Not a punishment of the taxpayers in fines against “the State” The person who has become a wrong-doer is that officer. We hold certain persons in a free society to a higher standard of conduct. A sworn officer is in that category. Thus it becomes a rather clear to me situation. Either these officers are guilty of not being competent or are willfully making a bad choice. They have a choice to either learn and follow the defined in law rules or be removed.

Oh, there is a very dark and grim probability that these actions are being directed from above as “reality manipulation” but we all know such things never could happen in a free society….

We need to start requiring individual officers to maintain a sort of malpractice insurance. There’s only one thing that irks me more than uppity, self-righteous pigs who abuse their authority — my city/state having to shell out *MILLIONS* of dollars because Deputy Doughnut has never heard of YouTube, and feels like clotheslining a 14 year old for skateboarding.

I didn’t hire this idiot, I didn’t authorize him to use excessive force for personal pleasure, and I certainly didn’t authorize the multi-million dollar payouts that ensue. Let them pay for their own stupidity. We require doctors to maintain malpractice insurance, and most of them don’t carry firearms like a second dick.

Perception is reality. Manipulate perception and? Saying a thing might not make it so.Said enough times it does make it become perceived to be. And from that one more nibble gets taken out of freedom. Eventually, when someone comes forward with hard provable evidence that reality is different from the manipulated perceptions we have been fed? The perception has an inertia of sorts rendering truth sort of less important to the hoodwinked.

Of course such things like announcements of willfully false information or police arresting photographers are all fabrications from those who would lie to us. As our authorities never lie -right-?

Dear Boing Boing,
Would it be too much to ask for you to actually credit the source of the “story” you are referring to? It was written by a reporter at The New York Times, which spends a lot of money (about 200 million dollars annually, from what I’ve read) on news gathering. It didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
I realize that if readers click on the link, they’ll be directed to the paper’s web site. But not everyone will do that, and anyway, shouldn’t you really give credit where credit is due?
Or maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

@zikzak: Why not both? It’s not THAT many extra keystrokes, after all.
Obviously it’s not a huge deal, but I was struck in reading Boing-Boing today that most of the posts credited the source (LiveScience, Fortean Times, etc.) but this one didn’t.

Don’t these morons realize that if your a “real” terrorist you’ll simply use a hidden video camera? Spy gear is cheap and the high quality photos are very easy…

What we need is someone to imbed a video camera in a cane and take tons of photos of the cops and then post them anonymously on a blog… show them that anyone holding a camera in plain sight is not a terrorist…

Of course the other side of this is that they know what is coming… I guess getting the ovens ready does that to a person…

@34: if you are a photographer and want to use a (recognizable) photo of someone else you need to have their release to do so. CCTV is institutional surveillance that asks for no such permission and could be used to inhibit an individuals freedoms. Frankly given the multitude of bureucratic injustices perpetrated against citizens I would prefer they did not have us surveilled indiscriminately.

Everyone knows that all of the 9/11 hijackers went to the WTC and took pictures of it so they would know how to identify the WTC. They did this because there are no pictures of the WTC available on the internet in 2001 and digital cameras were very expensive.

They also photographed the Pentagon as well as a filed out in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. They were ALLOWED to take these pictures unimpeded!

This is truly laughable. Banning photography for the slight chance the a person with malicious intentions will use that photography for reconnaissance (prior to launching some sort of attack) is an unneeded collective punishment. What about people with photographic memory (an extreme example being the savant Stephen Wiltshire…there are videos of him drawing entire cities from memory on YouTube). Are they going to begin evaluating peoples memory capabilities prior to allowing them entrance to the subway?

Could you imagine the police stopping you and saying, “Sir…staring is not allowed…if you stare in one direction for too long we will assume you are memorizing the layout in preparation for an attack…and arrest you.”

@35: “if you are a photographer and want to use a (recognizable) photo of someone else you need to have their release to do so.

Umm… no you don’t. If that person is in a public place, in public view, they have no expectation of privacy, and you are free to snap as many pictures of them as you want. You can walk around all day taking pictures of people on sidewalks and park benches and never have to fill out a single release form.

The line here gets blurry when you decide what gets done with the photo. If you’re selling it as “person on street” or “group on street” it doesn’t matter who the people were, it’s just a candid shot. However, if you’re selling “fascinating woman with piercing blue eyes in Central Park” then it IS about the person, and you probably ought to credit the subject. In that case, you’d probably already have had a conversation with them anyway and have their permission to take their photo.

Basically, as long as you’re IN a public place, taking pictures OF a public place, you’re ok.

If a cop or security guard tries to stop you from snapping a picture & uses 9/11 as the justification, look contemptuous & say “9/11 never happened. It was all faked by ‘the government’ to hide the fact that (World Trade Center was never built/ aliens stole the WTC/ WTC had to be blown up because all the employees turned into Zombies on 9/11/ etc).
Walk away with dignity as they stare in disbelief.

There’s a solution in the works folks, and it comes from within the system!

The economy continues to collapse. No one has the money to buy new electronics. These newfangled electronic cameras, as lovely as they are, don’t have the lifespan of a sturdy old film SLR. They die once their hamster-short lifespans are spent. No one buys film cameras then because no one has the money and the climate has gone to shit, so everybody is starving and freezing or frying, and they’re all eating each other anyway. So nobody is out in the open taking pictures because they’d be lunch!

See? All the photographic problems will be solved. And it’s brought to you courtesy of the same great minds that profit from the sale of the electronics which you are forbidden to use: our corporate overlords!

I spent the weekend on my first ever trip to NYC. Saturday night, standing in Times Square, taking pics of everything I could see, at one point I realized I had just taken a photo of a sign with three cops standing in front of it, and had a momentary chill as one of them glanced in my direction.

I’ve taken lots of pictures in London and never been stopped (it’s a lot rarer than BB would suggest…), but if I was ever stopped and asked to delete them, I’d refuse, and explain that if I’ve broken the law you’ll need the photos as evidence.

Ferris: “You honest men are such a problem and such a headache. But we knew you’d slip sooner or later…this is just what we wanted.”

Rearden: “You seem to be pleased about it.”

Ferris: “Don’t I have good reason to be?”

Rearden: “But, after all, I did break one of your laws.”

Ferris: “Well, what do you think they’re there for?”

Ferris: “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

I was out in Jersey last year making some large format photographs. The first day, I was just framing up a shot, focusing cloth over my head, when a black SUV pulls up in front of me, blocking the shot. “What are you doing,” asks the cop.

Uh, taking a photo.

“You can’t do that here, this is port authority land.”

How come?

Sure enough! “9/11″.

So I packed it up and went elsewhere. The following day, I’d just shot this – http://redirx.com/?sque – when three private security cars pulled up rather dramatically. Same story: what are you doing, you can’t photograph here, we have to take your film.

I don’t know if it comes across when you read about these situations, but when guys with guns stop you and start talking about 9/11, it gets the adrenaline going pretty good. But I stood my ground and politely told them that they weren’t police, that I was on public property, and that they couldn’t have my film.

So they told me they’d have to arrest me, which might have even raised a chuckle, and I reiterated that as private employees they had no right to do that either – but that I would gladly wait with them, if they wanted to call the police.

Eventually they settled for taking one of my polaroid tests with my name and address written on the back, and I said to the guy, you seem like a good guy; doesn’t it concern you that a lot of the freedoms that made this country great are being eroded?

Yeah, he said, it sucks for honest guys like you and me, but it stops the terrorists.